Reading the American tradition from an anarchist perspective

Jessie Redmon Fauset, “Plum Bun” (1929)

Earlier, I considered Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, which posited the dilemma between mobility and tradition. The hero of that story was able to escape from confinement and drudgery through most of her early life, but her commitment to the color line, her embrace of a black identity and her ultimate inability to cross that line led to a miserable later life. In Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral, we see another perspective on the color line. In Plum Bun, Angela Murray, is able to pass as a white (unlike her darker-skinned sister). She takes advantage of this ability, dating white men and pursuing an artistic career, but us ultimately confined by other forces: capitalism, gender, and ultimately race (which Angela can never fully escape).

Fauset also lived near the color line herself, having been rejected from Bryn Mawr because she was black but only after attending a white school. She was classically educated and earned a degree at Cornell. Despite working for one summer at Fisk, she struggled to find steady work until she starting working as literary editor for The Crisis. Before getting involved in the literary politics of the Harlem Renaissance (helping some of the major figures of that movement get published), she had worked in both white and black institutions. He was also raised in a large, poor family. She also had to work at low paid jobs for much of her life, finally accepting a position at De Witt Clinton high school in New York City. Despite the fame she enjoyed in the 1930s, the crude capitalist exchange of bare survival for a life-time of labor evaporated her literary career.

The color line is a theme that these Harlem Renaissance novels I have been reading come back to again and again. One of the later novels of this period, Black No More, goes as far as to create a science-fiction setting where the color line can be completely abolished with a simple medical treatment. This is just a simple reminder that while the image of the Harlem Renaissance is often centered on the lively cultural environment and the debates over the proper use of that culture, almost all of the works were deeply political in their effort to circumvent and undermine the color line.

I was reminded of Lu Xun’s essay “What Happens When Nora Leaves Home?,” when reading this. Passing is straight forward enough (I hesitate to say easy) for those with the right complexion, but color is not the only barrier to human equality. In this way, the novel asks the question: What happens when Angela leaves home to pass as white? As it turns out, simply passing is not that simple because exposure is always near. This was a truth first described by Charles Chesnutt in the early 20th century with his work on passing. But as a poor woman, Angela faced all sorts of other challenges, which leads to her ultimate decision to stay at the edge of the color line, reflected in her romance with biracial man.

The novel opens with great optimism about the potential freedom that comes from passing. Angela’s point of view seems to be that passing in itself is liberatory, but also foreshadow her difficulties. “Freedom! That was the note which Angela heard oftenest in the melody of living which was to be hers. With a wildness that fell just short of unreasonableness she hated restraint. Her father’s earlier days as coachman in a private family, he later successful, independent years as boss carpenter, her mother’s youth spent as a maid to a famous actress, all this was to Angela a manifestation of the sort of thing which happens to those enchained in might be by duty, by poverty, by weakness or by colour.” (438) Angela’s mother was also able to pass and it was from her that she learned that it could be a rather joyful game to play. It also had market potential. Angela used her ability to pass to seek out financial security. In one sense she is as free as the main character in Quicksand but is restrained by conditions and realities, not the internal acceptance of the ideology of race.

Angela’s search for personal autonomy, made possible by her ability to pass ran into the growing emphasis on racial pride, after she settled in Harlem. “It represented, the last word in racial pride, integrity, and even self-sacrifice. Here were people of a very high intellectual type, exponents of the realest and most essential refinement living cheek by jowl with coarse or ill-bred or even criminal, certainly indifferent, members of their race.” (650) But it also meant that she could enjoy the realities social freedom she was searching for. White supremacy seemed unable to affect the vibrancy of Harlem. It was in its own way an enclave that was recasting the color line. In her description of Harlem, we find a hidden discourse of black nationalism.

Blog Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to work through the American canon, as collected by the "The Library of America", from the perspective of the anarchist tradition. The blog’s title comes from Voltairine de Cleyre’s essay, “Anarchism and American Traditions.” With de Cleyre, I believe that the major tension in American culture is the libertarian, anarchist, and cooperative. Of course, this tension battled with corporatism, capitalism, nationalism, religion, and other anti-libertarian tensions that cloud our view of America. I hope to show how the American tradition speaks to the continuing conflict between the forces of conformity and individualism, the state and the community, freedom and slavery, socialism and capitalism.
I will be completing around one volume of "The Library of America" every week.
"Tashqueedagg" (from Tashtego, Queequeg, and Daggoo) suggests the international working class as described in "Moby Dick."